Online Sleuths Are Skeptical Of Wyoming Restaurant Manager’s Account Of Night Gabby Petito Was Last Seen
What really happened?
Instagram NewsNationNow reporter Brian Entin went on a trip to the Grand Teton area to do a little digging for a special that their program was releasing about Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie.
On this trip, Entin went to the Tex-Mex restaurant where people reported Laundrie yelled at staff aggressively and where Petito was last seen alive — only their story was much different.
What happened between Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie at Merry Piglets?
According to the initial account by witnesses at the Wyoming restaurant, Petito and Laundrie had an explosive argument while eating at Merry Piglets.
Nina Celie Angelo was eating there with her boyfriend when she started to notice one of the patrons was displeased with something and started to get loud.
“My first thought was that they were displeased with the service,” she said, “and they were walking out or they were trying to get out of paying their bill, but it was a scene."
What started out as a seemingly mild inconvenience turned into a full-on yelling match between Laundrie and the staff member he was talking to, according to the witness.
“She’s standing on the sidewalk crying and he walks out with her but then, right away,” Angelo recalled, “[He] turns around, walks right back in, and he’s, you know, kind of like violently talking to the hostess — angry.”
Many people read about the encounter and used it to support their theories about how Laundrie could have had anger issues or might have been abusive toward Petito.
The incident on August 12th in Moab, Utah, was brought back up — it was reported by a witness that Laundrie struck Petito in the face, and was later questioned alongside his girlfriend who appeared very distraught and many experts claimed she was in an abusive relationship.
The manager of Merry Piglets recalled the night Gabby Petito was last seen differently.
However, the manager who spoke to Entin said that the story the public is aware of isn’t actually what happened in the restaurant that day, that it “wasn’t what everyone said.”
According to Entin, the unnamed manager said, “there were no loud voices, no one got angry and no fit was thrown.”
The manager said that the paid were trying to leave the restaurant without paying their bill, but when the server followed them outside to get them to pay, they did so calmly and without any scene.
“Laundrie and Petito then went back inside the restaurant together with Petito asking for her money back,” the manager said. After the restaurant refused to give her money back, the pair left.
However, when Entin asked if they had any surveillance footage of the incident, the manager said that they deleted the film, not thinking that it would be anything important.
Online sleuths have question what really happened between Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito.
People are skeptical about the report from the manager, especially since they had previously confirmed that Laundrie and Petito were there after Angelo’s video went viral but didn’t mention anything else or that it was false.
Some think that the manager is just trying to save face for the restaurant and doesn’t want to look bad in case anyone skews the story to say that the Merry Piglets staff were to blame.
Others were looking at the FBI and wondered if maybe they asked the restaurant not to divulge any of the information to the public for the sake of the investigation.
August 27th is widely believed to be the last day Petito was alive, so some attributed her murder to the incident at the restaurant — calling it the “catalyst,” and saying it wouldn’t make sense if they calmly left.
Laundrie returned home alone 5 days later and was found dead in the Carlton reserve over a month afterward.
He remained the only point of interest in the murder of Petito, and it seems like the investigation would come to a close unless any new information is released by the Laundrie family.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.